General Writer Guidelines
Guidelines for Writing I. Code of Conduct We expect all of our writers to adhere to our code of conduct when writing articles and engaging in organization related activities. Failure to follow this code will result in suspension or termination of service: 1. Harassment, Discrimination and Bullying: We expect all of our writers to produce content that is both respectful and mature. We will not tolerate any content that includes targeted harassment or discrimination against any particular group of individuals. Such hit pieces will not be tolerated. If you have a question about if content violates this rule, please message one of our editors or Allan and Jeffrey, before publishing and they will guide you. 2. Preserving Confidentiality: If you have knowledge of any personal information regarding a private individual or organization, please contact them and make sure it is ok by them that you make their information public. II. Intellectual Property Rules 1. Double Posting: Please do not post content on our site that you have already produced for another site. If you produce content on our site, it should be unique to Porter Medium and should not be published anywhere else. Other organizations could pursue legal action if an article on our site contains the same content as an article on their site, even if it is an article from the same writer on both sites. Note that this rule does not apply if the other site that the writer publishes content on is a personal blog that the writer themselves owns. 2. Plagiarism: We expect all content produced on our site to be unique and not violating the intellectual property guidelines of any other organization. If you choose to include excerpts in articles from other works, please cite the publisher and organization when doing so. Note that this section does not apply to YouTube videos as YouTube videos can be posted freely throughout content. III. Image Copyright Rules When using images on PorterMedium, we require that they adhere to the current image copyright laws. Note that many other sites do not adhere to these laws and are often even shutdown because of violations to them. Therefore, please do not check the image practices of another site in determining which images are valid for use. Instead either see the guidelines below or simply ask one of our editors, Allan or Jeffrey. Guidelines: 1. Posting images from a specific photographer: If there is a specific photographer who’s images you would like to use inside your content please contact them via email or social media and kindly ask if you can use their images on behalf of our organization. Often times, they will permit you to use them provided you credit their name and organization in an image caption. 2. Posting Images from Google: When posting images on PorterMedium either as featured images or as images inside content, you must always have permission from the owner of the image to use it. For example, simply finding an image on google and using it can result in the owner of the image potentially pursuing legal action against either you or the organization. Therefore when posting images from Google, please make sure to do make sure the images you are using are labelled for public use. To check if images are labelled for public use please search for the image you need on google, direct to images, direct to tools, direct to usage rights and click on “Labeled for Reuse”. All images included in the results will be allowed to be used freely. For example, if you are searching for an image of a tree to use please try the following: Link to Image (Image 1): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vJlyr6bZEmXtNs_Cg1gW4wcMbiP1SgqN4o9bLbKfAIM/edit?usp=sharing Even when using images that are of public domain, it is still a good idea to cite the owner of the image in an image caption. For example, if I want to use the first image of the tree, I would click on the image which will enlarge it and show which organization is responsible for the image. To find out who owns it, click on the visit button as shown in this image: Link to Image (Image 2) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vJlyr6bZEmXtNs_Cg1gW4wcMbiP1SgqN4o9bLbKfAIM/edit?usp=sharing In this case, the image is owned by Lerkrat Tangsri of Pexels. Therefore when posting your image on Porter Medium, simple include “Via Lerkrat Tangsri, Pexels” inside the image caption. See below: Link to Image (Image 3) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vJlyr6bZEmXtNs_Cg1gW4wcMbiP1SgqN4o9bLbKfAIM/edit?usp=sharing More information can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/481194/c-notice-201401.pdf. Images that are inside embeds from twitter, youtube, instagram can be used freely and are not subject to copyright. That being said, when posting these images, the entire embeds must be included and not just the image. (meaning if you are posting an image included in a tweet, you must include the whole tweet and not just the image as well). IV. Article Styling For all articles, we will be using the New York Times styling guidelines when producing content. This style guide is for the most part intuitive, but may contain a few rules regarding capitalizing, apostrophes that you might not be used to. If you are not sure how to format content inside your article please see this FAQ regarding the New York Times Styling guidelines here: https:// afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/faqs-on-style-2/. General Info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ The_New_York_Times_Manual_of_Style_and_Usage General info on styling in general here: http://stylemanual.org/ Note: News articles may be subject to additional guidelines that will be posted separately. V. Interacting with Editors Note that the following does not apply for news content as editing for news content will be handled differently and guidelines on such will be posted separately. Editors will be assigned based on category of content. For example, if a writer is producing a Sports article, the writer will assign the article to the Sports category and the article will be submitted to the site but not yet published. The editor will then check the article to make sure it lacks grammar/spelling mistakes and conforms to our writing guidelines. Assuming it does, the editor will then allow the article to be published on the site. Note that editors may sometimes message writers with questions regarding the content of their articles. We therefore ask writers to make sure they routinely check their messages as the sooner they answer these questions, the sooner their article will be published. Note that if an article is time sensitive, please message either Allan, Jeffrey or one of the editors and they will make sure it is checked and published as soon as possible. VI. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY It is better to spend a month writing an excellent article, than to spend a day writing a mediocre one. There are no writing quotas/requirements and everyone is free to contribute as much as they have time for.